For Immediate Release

Date: April 8, 2011

A Placer County judge has sentenced a 53-year-old man to prison for 16 years for sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl in Kings Beach.

Silvestre Calderon Marquez was given the prison term Wednesday by Superior Court Judge Larry D. Gaddis following the defendant’s guilty plea last month to a felony count of continuous sexual abuse of a minor.

Prosecutor Tracy Lunardi of the Placer County District Attorney’s Office said Marquez had moved into a home with the girl’s family and that the sexual abuse of the child occurred from December 2009 to March 2010.

“The defendant terrorized this little girl to satisfy his own sick sexual desires,” she said after the sentencing.

The victim, who is now 14, submitted a letter to the court, detailing the threats that Marquez had made to her.

The threats included burning down her house, harming the girl’s parents and siblings and killing her puppy “unless I did all those horrible things he wanted me to do,” the girl wrote.

“I was so scared of him that I did not want to be alone at any time,” she wrote. “I thought I could protect my puppy by putting a fence on a small corner so it would not be within reach of this man.”

The girl said she threatened to call police on him if he harmed anyone in the family, “but it did not work. He just did not back off.”

The girl wrote that she finally told her parents about the crimes and that Marquez was kicked out of the house. However, Marquez “kept looking for me and following me,” once accosting her and bruising her arms by pulling hard on them, she wrote.

She wrote that she no longer trusts people, never feels safe and that she cannot sleep because of nightmares.

“They are so bad (that) sometimes I keep screaming, sweating and my mother tries to wake me up, but I don’t stop screaming in my dreams,” she wrote.

Lunardi, the prosecutor, was pleased with the judge’s sentence.

“Hopefully, the victim can have some peace of mind now that the defendant will be in prison for a long, long time,” she said.